Marina Skua Podcast Ep 36 – Knitting for a wet summer, yarn spinning and dyeing adventures

Hello and welcome to the Merina Skewer podcast. My name is Merina, I'm a knitwear designer and yarn dyer based in Bath in the southwest of England and in this podcast I talk about my yarn crafts and knitting and often a little bit of seasonal making as well. Now usually this time of year I really like to spend a lot of my making time outside in the garden. In the last episode if you watched you will have seen I've been doing a bit of spinning out there but recently it's been so rainy it's just been raining endlessly so I've spent most of my making time sitting right here on the sofa. But that does mean that I have been getting loads done and I have quite a few fun things to show you today. The first up is one that I'm wearing, not the cardigan, the cardigan is Snowland by Jessica MacDonald. It's a lovely pattern. On reflection I'm gonna share this because I think it's something that comes up quite a lot but people don't realise that it's a thing that happens to a lot of people. When you're working flat your gauge is often different from working in the round and that is really quite obvious in this cardi. So it's worked from the top down in rows and then you separate for the body and the sleeves and I don't know if you can see there but there's a point here where I cast on some underarm stitches for the body. The body continued to work flat then I picked up the sleeves. The sleeves are skinnier and so you end up with this slight extra bit of fabric around here and that's just because working sleeves in the round, especially small circumferences as you often get on sleeves, your gauge is often tighter because most people knit tighter than they purl and so when you're working flat you're purling every other row whereas for stockinette this is, whereas when you're working in the round you're knitting every round and that's something that has been noticeable in some projects for me but generally hasn't been that much of an issue because of the construction style. With this one it's quite noticeable and it occasionally bothers me. It's not at all the fault of the pattern, it's not going to bother me enough that I would undo it or anything. I still wear this cardigan loads and I love it but it's just something I thought I'd mention because it might be useful to someone. Check your gauge both flat and in the round and size up a needle size for the sleeves if you need to. But with that I'm gonna take it off and show you the top underneath which is a pattern I have just released. It is one that I did show a couple of episodes ago. This is the Dryopteris top, I think it probably didn't have a name then. It's a fairly simple shape, it's just got a straight body and then a bit of shaping around the arms and a nice round neckline and it's got a twisted stitch detail, not twisted stitch sorry, traveling stitch which is almost like a faux cable running all the way up the sides and then around the armholes up to the shoulder and it's got a nice little split hem there. And it's been a really, really great top this summer. As I mentioned in the UK it's not been particularly warm so it's nice to have a very lightweight wool layer. So this one is knitted in yarn by Wool Decanted, they're a fairly new yarn company based in the southeast of England and they're working with British wool and focusing on the slightly softer side of British wool. So this is a Shetland and Blueface Leicester blend. It's quite a fine yarn which makes a really lightweight fabric which I think is really, really nice for a garment, especially when you're going to be layering up because I like wearing lots of layers of knitwear but with heavier yarns it can get quite bulky and so means often that I will only do that when it's really chilly. Whereas at the moment it's not particularly nice out but it's still not actually cold but I can wear this. I've got a little vest underneath it but you don't need to, I've often been wearing it just against my skin. And yeah, it's a garment that I really enjoyed making. It's got, I feel, just the right amount of interest so it's mostly stockinette but then you've got little bits of interest down the sides just to keep things moving along a bit. And yeah, so the pattern is now on Ravelry and on my website and World Accounted are also selling kits for the yarn so you'll, if you wanted to make it with their yarn, which I recommend because it's a lovely yarn, you can get the quantity of yarn you need for your size and they have those ready on their website. I'll put a link to them below as well as link to just the pattern if you were interested in that. Now the next thing I have to show you is one that I was, I think, decently on the way with last time but it's now finished and that is this jumper which I am calling Opula. Now this one is one that I've designed using my Mendip 4-ply yarn so the main colour is beech and the contrast colour is teal. They're both on the Stormy base which is a naturally coloured base and I really, really love how this one turned out. Yeah, it's out for test knitting at the moment so the pattern is going to be out in a little under a couple of months, at some point probably in October. So you've got the colour work on the yoke which I'm really, really keen on. I think it might be one of my favourite yoke designs so far and then little bits of colour work transitioning into the contrast colour for the hem and cuffs. And I went for sort of half-length sleeves on me. They hit just around my elbow. I'll put in a photo of me wearing it so that you can see how it looks and yeah it's one that I really, really love. I really enjoy how it turned out and I can't wait to see my test knitter versions because it looks like there are some excellent colour combinations coming up. So again I'll put a link for the yarns that I used for this one in the description box below. Generally everything I talk about where there could be a link to find there should be one in the description box. If there isn't just give me a comment and I'll remember to add it in. So that's that one. I really have been going for it with the designs recently. I'm loving working on designs especially garments which is something that when I was a bit newer as a designer I was very nervous of doing just because it's a lot of time investment for something that especially when you're starting out there isn't much guarantee I mean there's sort of never guaranteed return but it's easier when starting out to do more accessories and while I love knitting accessories I've always loved garments so much more and so it's really nice to be working on those and to have people saying nice things about them. So the next one is one that I actually only started a couple of weeks ago but have made decent progress on. There is another design that I'm working on that I'm not going to show you because it's for a publication and so this one is one that I've just done the body of so it's bottom up starting with the hem. This is again wool decanted yarn so it's you can probably see the same colour as the top that I'm wearing which is a natural undyed colour. It's got it's mostly stockinette but then it's got these sort of wedges at the side with moss stitch and some sort of travelling stitches creating a bit of a detail there. So this one is going to be a fairly straightforward shoulder jumper just with those nice little details there and that's something I'm enjoying as well you can see it with this one where I've loved designing colour work but I also really like a combination of fairly simple structure and interesting texture and I think an undyed but slightly heathery yarn like this one is perfect to show off something like that. So you can see I still haven't finished the neckline that's going to be in two by two ribbing like the hem and then it'll be one that I probably end up folding over so it's like a double neckline and be really squishy and then I need to pick up for the sleeves and do those. So this is one that I don't have a name for yet. It's a tiny bit creased because it's been folded up. Yes I don't have a name for it yet. I generally decide the names for things when I'm about to put them out for test knitting and I need to set the pattern up on Ravelry so that I can get the test knitter code thing and then Ravelry asks me for a pattern name and that's the point at which I have to do a name for it now and then I spend ages doing weird little brainstorms and looking at Anglo-Saxon dictionaries and playing around with letters and things until I hit something that I like. Opula, which is what I called this one, is just a silly made-up word which is what a lot of them are. I like playing with languages and yeah, yeah. So yes that one I will be working on again once the other design is finished because there's a deadline on that one and there isn't on this one and I'm doing a fair bit of juggling with all the designs at the moment and it's really fun actually. It's nice to be able to spend time focusing on design work but yes it's not all been knitting. In the last episode I showed some plying that I was doing of some hand spun yarn. I have now finished that. I have three lovely skeins of this yarn. It's a colour that I've really been struggling to describe because it's a blend of dark purple, very, very bright pink, orange, yellow and a bit of whitey cream which means it's quite a complex colour once everything's all blended up but I've realised that it's actually exactly the colour of the dried achillia or yarrow flowers from my garden last year which when they were fresh were a clean bright pink but now they're dried they've got that sort of slightly dusty tone to them and this is exactly the colour. So yes I have mentioned before it's a blend of mohair, blueface lester, soy and a little bit of Shetland tea's watercross. All of them are ones I dyed myself and then blended up and so I've got 250 gram skeins here and then this one is a 70 gram skein which is is a fair bit of yarn. I often get bored of long-term spinning projects and larger quantities because I find that spinning doesn't do quite as much to hold my attention as knitting does because there's sort of less to gauge the progress you're making and fewer steps so knitting you often you know you have a marker for the beginning if you're working in the round even if you're just working the stockinette you have a marker for the beginning of the round and you can see how it's growing whereas spinning you're always kind of covering up the work you've already done as it builds on the bobbin but it is something that I really enjoy I just tend to do it in slightly smaller stints. So this one I've been working on for a few months and I'm really glad to have it finished now and it's probably going to be another few months before I knit with this which is something I'm quite fine with especially with yarn that I've spent so much time working on. I would hate to count how much time I've actually spent making this because it's hours and hours of just sitting and spinning and then plying and drafting and all of that and I love that and I think it's really nice to spend a bit of time with the yarn in the stage that it is like this before deciding what to knit with it which might be a slightly strange thing but I think it's nice to appreciate those materials and it'll give me time to think what it's going to be suitable for. I already have a couple of patterns in mind but I'm gonna sort of sit with them for a while and see if it seems right and then eventually do a little bit little bit of swatching and see if I'm getting a sort of fabric I like with the correct gauge and things like that and then I'll work it out. Now another somewhat recent yarn based project is this one. Now this is yarn that was sent to me a few months ago by my lovely friend Kat of the Heather and Hops podcast. If you've not come across her podcast before I highly recommend you give it a watch. She talks a lot about sort of the mindfulness of knitting and a bit of the history of craft and creates a really lovely comforting atmosphere and I highly recommend it and yeah this is yarn that she had had spun up from wool local to her that she sourced in Hertfordshire. It's 50% Jacobs and 50% ballet black nose and I mentioned that I hadn't tried ballet black nose before. She very kindly sent me a couple of skeins. These were a natural sort of creamy white when they arrived and I decided they would be perfect for a bit of natural dye experimentation so I dyed them with woad seeds from my garden. Now anyone who's grown woad before knows that once you get a decent crop going you end up with so many seeds, like far more seeds than you could possibly need to plant for next year's plants. I had quite a few messages this summer saying hi I know you do natural dyeing do you want any woad seeds and I was like no thank you that's really kind but I already have plenty. The seeds look like this I don't know how well you can see there but they're this really interesting sort of purpley black colour and so it's kind of it's always fascinating to see what colour natural dye sources give because it often bears no relation to the actual colour of the dye stuff itself and so I recorded a video of dyeing up this yarn it's on my Patreon channel if you're interested in seeing that. I did have to do a bit of modification to get this colour and it was a really interesting experience and I actually had no idea what colour to expect and I'm very pleased that I got this lovely olive green because it is one of my favourite colours. So again this is one that I will spend a while thinking what to make. It's definitely a rustic yarn, it's got quite a bit of toothiness to it. I know that Kat had made a pair of slippers from hers and I think well I if I had one skein I think slippers would be great but I've got two and so I would want to use them in a project together and I have some other undyed naturally coloured yarn in a similar weight and so I might end up playing with these and also some white and grey and brown yarns and maybe combine them into something for a bit of colour work. I think that could be really pretty. If you're interested in the yarn I'm not sure if she actually has any left but this is the Shire 4 ply, it's 275 metres per 100 grams. Kat hasn't asked me to do any of this by the way, she just sent me some because she's nice and yeah it's a lovely yarn and I really enjoy trying out new wools and new fibres and experimenting to see what those yarns are going to be suitable for. So yes, again something that I'm really going to enjoy planning a project for once I have a little bit more brain space for project planning. One more thing I'd like to show you, I realise this is a slightly show-and-tell heavy episode but I hope that's okay with you. This is issue six of Making Stories magazine which I've had my copy for a little while but the official release date is the 1st of September. I wanted to wait to show it off until pre-orders are open at local yarn shops and I think subscriber copies have started arriving as well. I get my copy a little bit earlier because I get a contributor copy because my tech edit for the magazine, just for full disclosure there, but I just wanted to show you a couple of the things that I really like. The theme is skyward which is just a really nice theme, it's something I love to do when I go out on walks, spend a lot of time staring at the sky. So there are some lovely patterns and a couple of really nice articles in here, a particularly good one on mindfulness in knitting which I recommend, it's got some good advice in it. This one by Valentina Kosciani is called Zero and it has a lovely sort of undulating pattern on the yoke which I think is really pretty. You're going to have to bear with me while I look through because, as always, I did not mark my pages in advance. These are the Vitrae socks by, let me check that it's, yes, Audrey Borrego. They've got some really pretty sort of travelling stitches and little cables. I mean honestly I really like them to look at, I probably won't make them because I'm hating making socks at the moment. I still have a half finished pair of socks which have been sitting on the needles for months and haven't got anywhere. I don't know what it is, I love wearing handmade socks, cannot stand knitting them and I'm trying to work out whether it's worth suffering them. I'm trying to find a good shot that shows off this one, I think this is quite pretty. This is Ley Lines by, let me check, forgive me if I don't pronounce this correctly, I think it's Kirsten Rivetta, which has really cool diagonal sort of stitch pattern on the front and on the sleeves. It's a really, really lovely one. Again, I'll include a link to Making Stories site so hopefully you'll be able to have a look at some of the photos of these and then one more that I really like and I just want to show you this photo because it's amazing. Look how good that spread is! So this one's called Boirina by Elena Solyanskaya. If I know where a name's from I have a much better chance of being able to pronounce it correctly but sometimes you just have to guess. And I hope that's showing up but it's got beautiful cables going up the sides and under the arms which I think is really, really lovely. So yes there are some really nice patterns in there, the whole colour scheme is just really calming and having said it's calming that one's a bit more tazzy. But yes it's very soothing to look at and it's a lovely read and there are some really, really nice patterns in there so I hope you'll take a look. So that is all I'm going to share for now. I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. Quick reminder this is the Dryopteris top, it's out now on Ravelry and my website and there are kits available from World Accounted. And if you want to make sure that you catch my videos as they come out please do subscribe, it would be great, it also helps YouTube know that people actually like my videos. And if you want to keep up with me between episodes I post on Instagram and you can sign up to my newsletter. And so I'm now going to leave you with a few extra shots of this one and some views of my completely chaotic and overgrown garden. And so until next time, bye-bye!